Letter: Bundles of dignity

Sir: Paul Vallely (Spirit of the Age, 28 November) quotes Ian Markham as saying that "If ultimately humans are nothing more than complex bundles of atoms emerging from a blind and irrational process and facing extinction when we die, then it is difficult to see how we can affirm the inherent dignity of people."

Nonsense. As I see it, it is precisely because of us having emerged from this "blind and irrational" process, which underlines our uniqueness and the rarity of the phenomenon of life itself in our vast universe, that we can grant ourselves this "inherent" dignity.

Contrarily, I see no dignity conferred upon humanity by the belief that we were created by some divinity who needed someone to worship him.

MICHAEL WRIST-KNUDSEN

Ely, Cambridgeshire